17. Llewyn Davis ('Inside Llewyn Davis')

Arguably the most tragic Coen brothers character — and almost certainly the saddest — Llewyn Davis is a bedraggled musician whose talent is only matched by his gift for wasting it. Surly at the best of times, the folk singer only grows more jagged as the grief he shoulders begins to dovetail with the slow-motion death of his creative dreams. Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy for the curmudgeonly troubadour, but the genius of Oscar Isaac's performance is that he makes going in circles feel like such an immensely moving journey. Davis never became a success, but his struggles make for one hell of a ballad. DE